Fair question, Charlie. One would imagine Google will be around for awhile, and so will the images, but what happens when Google (or its eventual owners) decideds to invest elsewhere. It's worth noting the outcry when another data series deemed important to the nation ended due to a lack of funding: The Statistical Abstract of the United States, which the United States Census Bureau, had published annually since 1878, providing statistics that described social and economic conditions in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau, sadly, stopped publishing it with the 2012 edition -- and stopped compiling the data on which it is based. Data is more perishable than we like to think.

I doubt there's a definite commitment to archiving for a specific length of time, but as long as storage capacities increase, hardware costs decrease, and the image resoltion remains the same, every passing year will make the possibility more affordable.

>>From the hard science novel "Memories with Maya" ..."The imagery was replaced by a street I recognized immediately as Mumbai.

"Care to enlighten me more?" I asked. I couldn't help turning around and seeing so many people walking past me, It was almost claustrophobic. Over the sound of horns and street children playing, he explained. "I was with Satish and he had these ideas for enhancing the Wizer's visuals. You know how the environment artists are," he said.

"So it's mapping video texture over the live geometry. Cool," I said."Yeah, the breakthrough is I can freeze a frame... freeze real life as it were, step out of the scene and study it."----------

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.